Thank God for the New York Mets

C onfession: I’m overwhelmed. It’s that season of life, where you are making weighty decisions. I don’t want to overshare, because it’s the same sort of thing everyone is facing in their fourth decade of life, if he hasn’t already. And it’s all happening at once. You’re still making fateful decisions about your children’s education, and then you can barely lift your eyes up before you notice that one of your older relatives isn’t as trustworthy behind the wheel or on her own feet. Your in-laws and parents need care. A business acquisition upends long-term plans and forces you to reconsider everything: what you plan to do between now and retirement, what level of income you really need, where you want to live. Then the cancer diagnosis comes into your family, as it does once or twice every generation.

You catch yourself thinking about all your time differently. Not, “What do I want to do?” but, “What would I regret not doing?” And in my personal case, it’s an election year — which puts a weight on everyone in my business. Especially those of us who have already written many hundreds of thousands of words about Donald Trump over the past nine years. He’s not changing, and yet there is pressure to say something new. To observe something new. I’ve been coming up short.

None of this is especially bad, or sad. It’s just the normal overwhelming summit of life. And simultaneously, it’s also a wind-up for me to thank God for the New York Mets.

I’m still attending to all the duties of life, more or less. But nothing has lightened the load more than this improbable playoff run of the most likable Mets team of my life. I could explode from gratitude.

The Mets started 0–5. In April, for my birthday, I took my oldest boy to his first Mets game. We got fantastic seats, and by sheer luck and pluck, my son snuck to the front of the first base dugout and got shortstop Francisco Lindor to sign his baseball before the game started. It helped him, throughout a year when many of his classmates are putting Yankee peer pressure on him, to resist and hold to the familial faith in the Miracles from Flushing. The Mets won that game, thank God. And we were high-fiving everyone around us. Then later this summer, I took my own father to his first Mets game, with his grandkids: a smashing comeback victory over the Padres on Father’s Day.

My Brooklyn grandmother grew up a Dodgers fan. Her husband was a New York Giants fan. The 1962 debut of the Mets brought about the final form of unity in their marriage, and their love for the Mets shaped my childhood home. My grandmother, with a glass of white wine in hand, calling me away from whatever game I was playing to watch Darryl Strawberry swing a bat.

I was too young to have any strong memory of 1986. I remember the later years of Doc Gooden and Darryl. I remember Mackey Sasser, our catcher with a rocker for an arm but who mysteriously got the yips and couldn’t release the ball from his hand. I remember Bobby Bonilla not working out. And Vince Coleman getting in trouble for throwing firecrackers at fans, or something. My childhood Mets joy was David Cone striking out 19 Phillies on the last day of the 1991 season. I didn’t quite understand how the Phillies weren’t sending their best.

But, now, these Mets! And I have three children older now than I was in 1986. We have listened to the Mets clinch a wild-card berth as I picked them up from the bus stop. How did they do it? An improbable twice come-from-behind victory capped off by a Francisco Lindor home run. We’ve had a great run of games beginning at 5 p.m. — which is perfect for little boys like mine. Less than a week later, my boys took off their shirts and waved them like rally towels in the living room when Pete Alonso hit a go-ahead homer to put the Brewers on their path to the offseason. The Lindor Grand Slam that put the Phillies to pasture was even crazier. Somehow the boys themselves feel the Mets’ seeming invincibility rubbing off on them. Meanwhile, my phone is blowing up with my Mets fan buddies from different cities sharing memes, and their worries that this will all go up in flames. It’s been a chance to reconnect.

Yes, there are still tough conversations happening after the kids leave for school in the morning. There are sleepless nights. But the Mets have given a rhythm to these darkening days. They’ve provided levity and a reminder that hard work and investment yield results. Just when my thoughts drift to a dark spot, the crack of the bat snaps us to the here and now. Baseball is just a game, but it’s more real than any of the phantoms I fear. Howie Rose’s voice rises, and I live this electric vicarious thrill through my children who dash about the living room. I am telling my sons they will be watching these highlights for the rest of their lives, the way I have watched Mookie Wilson, and Endy Chavez, and Daniel Murphy. These are the days. Thank God for these New York Mets.